Literary Allusions in A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Thirteenth, The End

What's in a Name?

by Chris Frantz

Related Links

Some of the names used by Lemony Snicket might seem really peculiar if you did not know their origins. Since The End takes place on an island, most of the character names come from literary and real-life castaways, mutineers, and sea-faring folk.

Friday and Robinson
In Daniel Defoe's novel of the same name, Robinson Crusoe helps the escaped prisoner Friday and he becomes Crusoe's companion.

Ishmael
Ishmael is the narrator of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. Ishmael is also the first son of Abraham in the Old Testament. He and his mother Hagar were turned out of Abraham's house and the name has become associated with orphans and outcasts.

ErewhonErewhon is the name of Samuel Butler's 1872 novel. Erewhon is the word "nowhere" spelled backwards with the H and W switched and the name of the fictional country the hero discovers. Butler probably based his Erewhon on the South Island of New Zealand.

Weyden and Larsen
Humphrey Van Weyden is a castaway rescued by the brutal captain Wolf Larsen in Jack London's novel, The Sea Wolf.

Omeros
It's the Greek form of the name Homer and a poem by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott. The poem takes place on the island of St. Lucia using characters and images from Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad.

FinnMark Twain's Huckleberry Finn sailed down the Mississippi on a raft. There is a famous shipwreck scene in the book.